When people come together anonymously and call themselves a community it can become very confusing as to who is genuine. We see it on social media more than anything else but forums has always been the king of this activity. The hive mind is built by the most vocal members and before long the lesser drones begin to echo their mantra as if it was fact. This happens on any forum that you visit across the internet, even within a blog community–through the comment section. You get a handful of opinionated regulars that speak on a subject to the point where they become assumed authorities on it. People get used to their answers and before long they develop a following.

Why is it so easy for us to do this? Us of course being the vocal, frequent-visiting, knowers of everything. I’ve seen people on forums spin a tale about how much money they make, how many women they have slept with, and much, much more. Some will tell you that they are really a celebrity posting anonymously so that they can be candid. The words come off as nonsense and lies when you read them, but in time, with enough posts, the hive starts to believe.

On the internet it seems as if everyone’s pretending… but is it just the internet? When I attend certain venues in real life (wine tasting), I see a lot of real-life versions of the lying trolls on message boards.

You have:

The supposed star college football player that had a chance at the NFL but got injured.

The hustle bunny that wants you to overhear how she was once engaged to (insert celebrity) but he left her with the car.

Loud business guy that needs everyone to overhear how successful he is.

And much, much more.

Why can’t we all be genuinely mediocre, or if successful and kicking life’s ass, shouldn’t our actions speak loud enough without the “look at me” nonsense? It seems as if everyone is lying and faking nowadays in order to build a supposed brand. A brand that ultimately means nothing besides getting a quick boost to the ego. It’s one of those things that dawned on me as I sat eating breakfast one day, listening to the banter going on around me. It was an out of body experience where I drifted out and looked in, paying attention–for the first time–to the things people say compared to the way they live their lives.

We all want to impress, look better in everyone’s eyes, appear beyond normal, disrupt the flow… whatever. But it is false, an act, Hollywood, bogus. Sometimes I feel that we absorb so much of the celebrity gossip and worship that we cannot stand to be just regular people anymore. We’re concerned with Beyonce, Kim Kardashian, NFL players, and the latest winner of the Hunger Games that will get a record deal. It’s almost like we live in this dystopian future of brainwashing that we can’t look past. A matrix of illusions that has us all convincing one another that you’re either great or you need to look great in order to fit into society. #murika!

Most of us are nobody’s, but we don’t want to hear it. So we get on our online personalities and we spin the facade, we spin and we spin and we spin. Then we go out to bars, get drunk, and spin another facade to the person that we hope will buy our bullshit long enough to keep talking. It is a sad reality that we live and if you think that I am being overly negative or making this up, trust me, after reading this, you too will start to notice it.

About Greg Dragon

Greg Dragon is the founder, publisher and editor-in-chief here at the Hall of The Black Dragon Magazine. You can follow Greg on Twitter @HobDragon or on his Google+ account. Greg Dragon is an independent author that writes a variety of novels. You can view his author page on GregDragon.com.